Preserving Foods

Lilikoi Jelly

Yesterday was a great jelly-making day. I don't like to can when it's hot, due to all the heat and steam the process generates. Also, we were out of jelly. At left is the first stage -- combining the lilikoi nectar, sugar, and water until it boils.

Heating lids

Heating water in the massive canner

Pectin added . . .

I love the color of this jelly. It's just about to come to a boil again. The house smells really good.

Done!

This is my favorite part. I love it when I take the jars out of the canner, put them on dishcloth, and they all start to make that "popping" noise: "Tink." Wait, maybe it's "tonk." I always feel at this point like I am calling roll. Everyone has to chime in. Anyway, my yield was 12 small jars, and 3 medium.

Thoughts on Preserving Foods

Hawaiian Cherry-Apple Chutney

Dealing with it

The only problem with having all of that fruit and produce you so carefully cultivated is that, if your efforts were successful, you now have a pile of stuff to deal with. For some of it, you can nicely offload with the neighbors and your office mates, but after a while they don’t want to see another of your zucchini, bananas, or kale-bunches. You just have to preserve it, one way or another.

Logically, I should have planned on this when I went bonkers on the planting, but logistics are not my strong suit.

There are several methods of preserving food, including dehydrating, freezing, and canning. I chose to start with blanching and freezing vegetables, which is not too difficult. We had purchased one of those vacuum-packing appliances, which comes with heavy-duty plastic bags. My husband immediately dubbed it the Super-Sucker, which of course stuck. The principle is that you prepare your vegetables (or meat, or whatever), insert into the appropriate-size bag, place into the super-sucker and hit the buttons. All air is removed surrounding the food so that freezer burn is no longer a frightening threat. You then label the bag and toss it into your freezer. It’s pretty nifty, and works well for bumper crops of vegetables as well as meats, poultry, and fish. My one caveat is that, being logistically challenged, cutting the right size of bag is often an issue for me. I usually err on the side of Way Too Damn Big, unless I enlist the help of Mr. Logistical to cut them for me.

The freezer only contains so much space, though, so I had to move forward toward other preservation methods. This time, I opted for a food dehydrator. The principle with this method is also relatively simple. For pears, for example, you slice thinly, dip in a simple syrup, drain and then place on the racks of the dehydrator. You set the dial according to the manual, plug it in, and let it go. After a few hours, you have dried fruit. It’s much less expensive than the kind you buy at the grocery store.

Besides fruit, you can also dry your garden vegetables by dehydrating them. Bag up when dry, then toss into a soup or casserole when needed. Herbs are also a good candidate for the dehydrator. Although my dehydrator has directions for jerky, I have not yet been that brave, and have never had to deal with a lot of meat at one time.

My personal nemesis, lilikoi (passion fruit) finally pushed me to learn canning. A tiny vine, nurtured by Mr. Logistical (who possesses a green thumb) became a nightmarish producer of the fruit. Lilikoi fruit is not only challenging to process, but it is also impossible to give away because of that challenge. The work is worth it, though, because the jelly or butter is like eating sunshine out of a jar. But I digress. I had to do something with this delicious fruit, so it was time to learn how to can.

I was not a complete stranger to canning; my mother had made jellies and jams. However, she did so with mixed results. Plum jelly was re-christened plum runny. (It was actually good on pancakes.) The occasional bug turned up in blackberry jam. (“More protein,” said my steadfast father, who knew better than to joke about it.)

So, learn to can I did, enlisting Mr. Logistical for the first round as assistant. Even though the process is very, very hot, and extremely sticky, I found it to be more rewarding than other preserving methods. First off, if you can something like sunshine in a jar, and give it away as a gift, people get pretty excited. They ask for more. They now bring me their empty jars, and buy me new jars. They also turn up with offerings of their own, which is always very nice. Canning also brings out my inner pioneer woman. There is something about seeing those rows of jars, neatly lined up on a shelf, that I find reassuring. My family will never suffer naked toast.

Canning is not something you can do on the spur of the moment. Even though I consider myself a Level 1 Canner (I just made that up), I need three hours to do it. That includes set-up and clean-up.

This brings us to pressure-canning, which I have not yet tried. However, I fear it is in my future, mostly because it is just a preservation method stone-yet-unturned. I am deathly afraid of pressure canning. Not only do you hear stories about the top blowing off (still, in this day and age of technology) but there also seems to be so much you have to worry about, lest you give someone botulism. My friend Susan pressure-cans with aplomb, cranking out jars of her own tuna, salmon, tomatoes and peaches. She has no fear of these sorts of things; I do. I had a co-worker, many years ago, whose husband collected pressure canners. Unfortunately, he tended to find them at St. Vinnie’s, and there was probably a reason they were there. She was always telling stories about how Ralph blew roast beef all over the ceiling, or beans onto the windows. It just sounds frightening to me, but maybe someday I will attempt something, if Susan will supervise.

There are, of course, truly more pioneer-ish methods of food preservation, such as smoking meat, pickling, and salting. Several of my neighbors have jars of salt-pickled lemons on their roofs, and swear by them for colds. What the heck, I might try it.

Canning Tips

Buy a canning book (or, if your canner is new, and comes with a manual, read it).

When you are ready to can, first fill up the canner and start heating the water. It will take a while.

Wash everything as instructed. Make completely sure that everything is clean, and hot.

Follow directions and measurements exactly.

I get better results with liquid pectin than powdered pectin, but that’s just me.

Before you get excited and start giving away jars as presents, test one. Make sure you had a good seal, and that the stuff in the jar is safe.